Josh Mack blogging at the intersection of technology and the liberal arts, and occasionally on; bicycles, politics, Brooklyn, parenting, crafts, and good reading. Currently helping to build a new NYC neighborhood news site - nearsay.com, that celebrates the voices that make our city. Subscribe to the daily newsletter it gives you what you need to know.

John Markoff's very good article in The NY Times on social content and sharing. It sort of sums things up. It also proves that the West Coast is leading the thinking. I'm so glad it came out. I had been pushing a wiki before I left on vacation, the timing seemed great as the LA Times announced one. Then when I was in NH they pulled it due to the vandalism and lack of community spirit and I thought, "how will I ever convince people that it will work", but then this article came out and I've realized that my wiki idea is alive and well due to the idea of trusted contributors that Yahoo is thinking about. Yay!

June 29, 2005

Last night I saw Richard Thompson play a solo show as part of the River to River Festival at the World Financial Center. He was amazing. I've never seen anybody play the guitar like that. He sang some classics, some new songs including, a great rocking kid's song about ancient Egypt, and a blues song about loving really smart women. But he also sang a haunting song that he said was about fundamentalism called Outside on the Inside that has a chorus about "a message on the wind". The fact that he sang it right in front of a glass courtyard that was shattered by 9/11 was very powerful.

Just built a small site for an author friend called Whatwouldmacgyverdo.com . He is editing a book a "MacGuyver" moments, instances where flashes of inspiration appear to help get people out of tight situations. He hopes to collect essays on the site to include in the book. So if you've ever had a moment where either a moment of wit, a clothespin, or some duct tape have goten you out of a tight spot please visit the site and share your story.

June 27, 2005

So back from the woods of New Hampshire and into the hot humid fire that is New York with nary a lake in sight. But tomorrow night I'm going to hear Richard Thompson play for free at the World Financial Center which is something that just doesn't happen in the woods.

List - Time.com's 50 Coolest sites. It also points to Food411 which was started by the woman who runs 101 Cookbooks, a really nice food blog. They alerted me to their mention in the article and I'm really impressed with the way she's added this great index to her small empire.

Susan Mernit has a very good recap of remarks by Fran Hauser the GM of Time Interactive, on magazines and brands, from a conference at The Media Center. She also disagrees with them. In a rare instance I actually find myself disagreeing with her to a point. I think that Hauser's challenge to the magazines to justify why a new technology is important to the brand makes for more interesting use of tools. Why for example is video important for parenting when articles and photos can accomplish the same thing. Also Hauser by raising the bar prevents a "me too"syndrome from starting. If brand A gets video without making a good case then all of the others can make a case for it. On the other hand she goes a bit far in making generalizations that RSS is a male thing, somewhat overlooking the way RSS can be used for syndication. Final words from Fran were lessons learned:

Be judicious about using new technology platforms

Does it fit the brand to extend to this platform?

Is there a hole in the market for this new extension?

But Susan writes "...If I were the person dealing with these issues, I would approach it
completely differently--I think the best questions for media brands are
to ask--what tools and technologies are your current audience using and
are you on par with those?-- and then, most importantly--what
tools and technologies are new audiences I want to acquire using--and
shouldn't I look at how those tools can help me get this new audience?" She would be correct if the editors of the magazines or the people making the decisions were thinking "what kind of content can I create to use these tools well in a unique way that would get me a new audience. Then also how am I going to market this new thing to a broad audience? If these questions are answered or a use can be justified then I agree with her but in my past experience too often they hear something is hot and they need it without making any commitments to making something good and without staffing the resources or in the case of certain user generated things to enable the content to morph in to something interesting. Just having the platforms doesn't mean that they will come.

June 19, 2005

Posting is going to be very light next week. I'm going to a pretty rural place where connectivity will be sporadic.

The questions and posts on paidcontent and other places about what makes a media company are pretty interesting. Last night I bought another iTunes essentials album which argueably makes Apple a media company.

Lastly, I'm getting married in the Fall so we've been learning about wedding rings. There is a "comfort fit" ring which has a more rounded inside that lifts the edge of the ring off your finger. I actually like the medium comfort fit, not only for the fit but also for the name. I'm a bit dubious about the "small comfort" fit or "little comfort fit" which is not what one should look for in ring or a marriage, and the "large comfort fit" which reminds a bit too much of one seeking mothering instead of a partnership.

Jeff Jarvis on the idea of Amazon as a content company or rather maven to borrow from The Tipping Point.

Susan Mernit sharing good advice she tells clients. Given that I know some of them I hope they listen. Also she has a nice post about my neighborhood Park Slope. Glad she still finds it to her liking.

LA Times finally launches their Wikitorial page. The history of revisions area is going to be really interesting to watch as the project evolves. I'm trying to convice some folks on the value of a Wiki for something I'm running and the LA Times move couldn't have come at a better time.

June 16, 2005

Internet news reports that QOOP and Flickr are going to team up to offer on-demand printing of photobooks. The article gives a good overview of the space. Iphoto by the way makes beautiful on-demand hardcover books. They are sort of pricey. It will be very exciting to see this come together. I wonder what the impact on the calendar business will be as yet more options flood the market? (via paidcontent.org)

June 15, 2005

Should any
political party attempt to abolish social security, unemployment
insurance, and eliminate labor laws and farm programs, you would not
hear of that party again in our political history. There is a tiny
splinter group, of course, that believes you can do these things. Among
them are H. L. Hunt (you possibly know his background), a few other
Texas oil millionaires, and an occasional politician or business man
from other areas. Their number is negligible and they are stupid.

Checking on whether this is an urban legend led me to the letter in which the quote appears in Ike's Presidential papers. I wonder what he would say about the war? And the six new British memo's that were leaked today.

June 14, 2005

A fairly disturbing poll out of Annenberg finds that more people 40% think Bill O'Reilly is a journalist than Bob Woodward 30%. Then again possibly more upsetting is the fact that 53% of the people polled didn't know who Bob Woodward is which explains why old Watergate players have been able to spin the story of DeepThroat into an anti-loyalty story. A link to the pdf. of the release here.

June 13, 2005

The New York Public Library has taken another step into the world of
downloadable content, launching its digital audio collection today with
733 titles.

Anyone with a library card and a Windows media player can now borrow audio versions of everything from The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn to Zane Gray on Fishing.
The MP3 files, which can be downloaded at any hour of the day from the
library’s Web site, at ebooks.nypl.org, are good for three weeks, after
which they can no longer be accessed. Users will be able to burn the
files on to CDs for personal use.

Once you can get over the irony that Michael Kinsley left a powerpoint with his plans for online change in a xerox machine for LA Times staffers to see in May the big news in the NYT story about the changes he is making at the LA Times editorial page is the introduction of a wiki. Let's just say that commercial use of a wiki is very much on my mind and it couldn't be better to have something like this launch this week. Now I better go find the printer that has a powerpoint I just printed.

June 12, 2005

So this afternoon my partner Bryony had an opening at Wave Hill, a botanical garden in Riverdale that has galleries. It is a fantastic show and though I'm biased many others thought so as well. She made several models of the main Wave Hill house and took them to often neglected urban areas such as Fresh Kills and the Gowanus canal. The photo on the right is from the postcard for the exhibition and shows the house in our backyard. It runs until August 28th if you find yourself around there I hope you go. There is a group show in another gallery they have there about weather that has some really nice pieces as well.

bzzzpeek.com - A delightful site that features kids from around the world giving their renditions of animals and fire engines. It has a really playful interface that is like a kid's toy. A center screen surrounded by silhouettes of the animals with rollovers. Let's say you choose chickens. Then the center screen fills with several chickens in the colors of the flags of the nations the sounds are from. It is really delightful and, I could see it as a toy or a video game. In fact going back to a very early post of mine about not-for-profits and games it would be a perfect thing for Unicef to sponsor on nick.com or something like that. The creators in the interview I heard on NPR sound like very nice people.

June 10, 2005

From the NYT: A House Appropriations panel on Thursday approved a spending bill that
would cut the budget for public television and radio nearly in half and
eliminate a $23 million federal program that has provided some money
for producing children's shows that include "Sesame Street," "Clifford
the Big Red Dog," "Between the Lions" and "Dragon Tales." Did anyone really not see this coming?

On this same subject hats off to the ombudsmen who wouldn't allow Tomlinson's "Ombudsmen" to join their organization.

If you haven't yet listen to Bill Moyer's speech which is about all of this you should.

June 08, 2005

According to USA today it is now a great time to start an Internet based company. It costs a lot less than it used to now you only need $500,000. The article explains that this is due to Moore's law and, outsourcing.

"Murakami is passionate about the intersection of creation and commerce" - This from an advertorial (which is in itself the intersection of editorial and advertising) in the New Yorker. It is ultimately ad ad for Windows. I used to say that I liked working at the intersection between new media and traditional media but now think it would be beter to be walking down a country lane or a city street. In fact there are now intersections just merge lanes. with SUVS that don't yield.

June 07, 2005

Just poking around Feedster a bit and came across this specialty feed builder. You name a food you like and it builds a feed that searches blogs for mentions of the ingredient. I'm going to create a feed for something simple like Chicken and see what happens.

June 06, 2005

I'm not sure if I would call it living but Scripps has rolled out a site called living.com which is apparently a "video magazine". The site seems filled with content from HGTV, the DIY channel, food network. They have a section called "E-living" which features "way cool design" with video features on the groovy Eameses. I'm not sure what I do with this url but it probably wouldn't be a "video magazine".

iTunes going to support podcasts including album art which also means that it can support photos of other things so that you could have text about a building and see a historic image of a building. One thing I'm wondering if they will support will be the codec that enables the addition of lyrics.

On the subject of Podcasts, I listened to Fred Wilson's family podcast on avc.blogs. I enjoyed it but the main thing I came away with was his was a much more rocking household than mine growing up. His kids each named their favorite tracks of new albums and the whole family went to summerstage to hear The Killers. In my house growing up we seemed to alternate between the same Verdi requiem, and a Judy Coliins song.